Getting Started with PRTG Network Monitor 8

2011 Paessler AG
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Contents

Table of Contents
1 Welcome to PRTG Network Monitor 2 Download and Installation 3 Start-Up 4 Auto-Discover Your Network 5 Object Hierarchy 6 Further Reading 4 5 8 10 13 18

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Getting Started with PRTG Network Monitor 8

Welcome to PRTG Network Monitor

Welcome to PRTG Network Monitor! You've chosen an easy-to-use software product that comes with a powerful set of features to monitor your entire network.

About This Document

This document is meant to guide you through a quick start so you can begin monitoring your network right away. It introduces you to the very basic concepts of the software, but it does not go into much detail. For detailed information on all available settings and possibilities, please refer to the Full Reference Manual 18 .

No Time For Reading?

If you do not read anything about PRTG, please take at least a look at section Object Hierarchy will help you understand how to best setup your monitoring.
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Download and Installation

Download and Installation

PRTG can be used to monitor computers and network devices in your infrastructure. With the setup of PRTG everything is included; you do not need to install any third party software. Simply download and install your version of PRTG. For video instructions, please see the More section below.
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Download
On the Paessler website, you find two different installers for PRTG, a public download for the Freeware and Trial editions, and another download for the commercial editions (which is only available for paying customers).

PRTG Download at Paessler Website

Downloading a Freeware Edition or Trial Edition

Please download the latest publicly available file from the Paessler website. When downloading the Trial Edition, you can also request a free trial key there:

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http://www.paessler.com/prtg/download

Downloading a Commercial Edition

Downloads and updates are free to customers with an active maintenance contract. Please log into the Paessler website to get the latest download. You can also find your license key there: http://www.paessler.com/login If you do not have an active maintenance contract, please prolong your maintenance after login, or contact sales@paessler.com.

Installation
Please double click the setup file on the computer that will be your PRTG server. Follow the installation wizard and install the software.

Welcome Wizard

If you have any questions while showing the welcome wizard, please click on the blue question mark ? symbol in the upper right corner to load a help page in your browser. This will provide detailed help for every single step.

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Download and Installation

Step 1: Choose the type of Edition you want to install. Step 2: For Trial Edition, Starter Edition, or Commercial Edition, provide your License information (skipped for Freeware Edition). Step 3: In the Essential Settings, enter a valid email address and leave the other default values. Step 4: In the Cluster Mode Selection, we recommend setting up your installation for Standalone Mode. You can extend your setup to a cluster later on.

More
Video Tutorial: There is a video available on the Paessler video tutorials page. http://www.paessler.com/support/video_tutorials/installation_of_prtg_network_monitor

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Start-Up
Once installed, you can immediately log into the Ajax web interface.

Load Web Interface

Open Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox on the computer you've installed PRTG and enter the IP address of your own computer in the address bar. If you have set one of these browsers as standard browser, you can also double click on the PRTG Network Monitor icon on your desktop.

Desktop Icon

Confirm Certificate Warning

When loading the web interface, your browser will usually show a certificate warning.

Security Warning in Google Chrome Browser

Every browser shows this warning in a different layout. The certificate that comes with PRTG is not insecure, but simply not signed by a valid authority. In order to proceed to the login screen, please confirm the claimed "security risk". The steps to take are similar for every browser, yet different in detail.

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Start-Up

Example As an example how to confirm an unknown certificate, find below a description for the most common web browsers: In Google Chrome, click on Proceed anyway every time you call the web interface. In Mozilla Firefox 3, click on I Understand the Risks, Add Exception..., Get Certificate; leave the check mark for Permanently store this exception; and finally click on Confirm Security Exception. You only have to go through this procedure once for every Firefox browser and PRTG core server. In Internet Explorer 8 or 9, click on Continue to this website (not recommended) every time you call the web interface. We recommend to not use Internet Explorer 8 or earlier.

Login
After loading the web interface, the login screen is shown:

PRTG Login Screen

Leave the default setting AJAX GUI (All features). Click on Use default login to automatically fill in login name and password (both prtgadmin). Click on the Login button to proceed to the PRTG web interface.

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Auto-Discover Your Network

Once you're logged in to the web interface, click on the Home button in main menu. The welcome screen is shown.

Welcome Screen

Click on Network Auto-Discovery to automatically scan in your network. PRTG will try to detect all attached devices automatically in just two steps. For video instructions, please see the More 12 section below.

Auto-Discovery Step 1
In the first step, the tree with all probes and groups of your setup is shown.

Add Auto-Discovery Group Assistent Step 1

Choose Local probe from the device tree. Click the Continue button.

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Auto-Discovery Step 2
In the second step, some additional information about your network is required.

Add Auto-Discovery Group Assistant Step 2

With the IP Selection Method, choose whether you want to enter a Class C base IP range, a List of individual IPs, IP and Subnet, or IP with octet range. All of these methods result in an IP address range which will be scanned during the auto-discovery process. Based on your selection above, different setting fields are available. We recommend you leave the Class C base IP option. In the IP Base field, enter the first three octets of your network's IP range, for example 192.168.0 or 10.0.0, or whatever IP address range you use. If you don't change the values for IP Range Start and End, PRTG will automatically complete the IP base and scan all IP addresses ending in .1 to .254. If available, provide credentials for Windows Systems, Linux Systems, VMware/XEN Servers, and for SNMP Devices. You can show the respective settings by removing the check mark symbol at the beginning of the respective line. For more information about the auto-discovery function, please see More 12 section below. Keep the default values for all other settings.

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Click the Continue button.

Ready
PRTG will now start discovering your network in the background, adding devices and sensors automatically. Meanwhile, you can get familiar with the Ajax web interface.

Auto-Discovery in Progress

Congratulations, you have successfully completed the first steps! Usually, the auto-discovery function has already detected most of the devices in your network. There are also sensors on the local Probe Device, monitoring the computer PRTG is installed on. In the welcome screen, click on Review Results to see the device tree with all devices and sensors.

More
Video Tutorial: There is a video available on the Paessler video tutorials page. http://www.paessler.com/support/video_tutorials/installation_of_prtg_network_monitor Full Reference Manual: Ajax Web Interface - Device and Sensor Setup: Auto-Discovery http://www.paessler.com/manuals/prtg8/auto_discovery.htm

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Object Hierarchy

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Object Hierarchy
If you do not read anything about PRTG, please read at least this section. It is important to understand how objects are arranged in PRTG in order to easily change settings and configure your monitoring.

PRTG's Device Tree After Installation

This section explains the concept of the device tree and the different objects in it: The Device Tree Root Group 14 Probe 15 Group 15 Device 16 Sensor 16 Channel 16
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The Device Tree

All objects in a PRTG monitoring configuration are embedded in a tree-like hierarchy to offer an easy navigation and to give the user the possibility to group objects that monitor similar devices, services, or same locations. The hierarchical order described is also used to define common settings for larger groups of objects by means of inheritance. For example, settings of the Root group apply by default to all other objects of your setup.

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Model of PRTG's Object Hiearchy

Root Group
The Root group is the topmost instance in PRTG. It contains all other objects in your setup. We recommend adjusting the default settings for the Root group to suit your network to best use the inheritance mechanism built into PRTG. By default, all other objects will inherit the Root group's settings. This makes configuration much easier later on. Just right-click any object to access its settings.

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Object Hierarchy

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Probe
Each group (except the Root group) is part of a Probe. This is the platform on which the monitoring takes place. All objects configured below a probe will be monitored via that probe. Every PRTG core installation automatically installs a Local Probe service. If you run a simple single installation only, you do not have to wonder about probes. Just create your groups underneath. You can add additional probes and remote probes to your configuration to include remote devices from outside your network into the monitoring. In a cluster, there is an additional Cluster Probe running on all nodes. Devices underneath the cluster probe are monitored by all nodes of the cluster, so data from different perspective is available and monitoring for these devices always continues, also if one of the nodes fails. These scenarios require extended setup, as described in the Full Reference Manual 18 .

Group
On each probe, there are one or more Groups, which serve merely structural purposes. Use groups to arrange similar objects in order to inherit same settings to them. To a group, you add the devices. You can arrange your devices in different nested groups to reflect the structure of your network. Find below a sample configuration: A device tree with local probe, several groups, devices and their sensors.

PRTG Device Tree View

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Device
To each probe or group, you can add Devices that you want to monitor. Each device in your PRTG configuration represents a real hardware device in your network. These can be, for example: Web or file server Client computer (Windows, Linux, or Mac OS) Router or network switch Almost every device in your network that has its own IP address

PRTG additionally adds a so called Probe Device to the local probe. This is an internal system device. It has access to the computer on which the probe is running on and monitors its health parameters with several sensors running on it.

Sensor
On each device you can create a number of Sensors. Every sensor monitors one single aspect of a device. This can be, for example: One network service like SMTP, FTP, HTTP, etc. One network switch port's traffic CPU load of a device Memory load of a device Traffic of one network card The NetFlow stream of a compatible device etc.

Channel
Every sensor has a number of Channels by which it processes and views the different data streams. The available channels depend on the type of sensor. One sensor channel can contain, for example: Downtime for a device Traffic in of a bandwidth device (e.g. a router) Traffic out of a bandwidth device (e.g. a router) Traffic sum of a bandwidth device (e.g. a router) WWW traffic of a NetFlow device Mail traffic of a NetFlow device Other traffic of a NetFlow device CPU Load of a device Loading time of a web page Download Bandwidth of a web page Time to first byte of a web page Response time of a Ping request to a device Response time of a Remote Desktop service etc.

More
Full Reference Manual: Understanding Basic Concepts

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http://www.paessler.com/manuals/prtg8/understanding_basic_concepts.htm

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Getting Started with PRTG Network Monitor 8

Further Reading
We recommend you take an hour to get familiar with the Ajax web interface, its menu, the device tree, and the settings. Often, help is directly provided within the interface, and more help is always available via the yellow help box in the upper right corner. If you have specific questions about one of the functionalities of PRTG, please refer to the Full Reference Manual: HTML: http://www.paessler.com/manuals/prtg8/ PDF: http://download.paessler.com/download/prtg8manual.pdf

Have Fun Monitoring Your Network!

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Last change to this manual (YYYY-MM-DD): 2011-05-10

2011 Paessler AG